Internet Chess

There are a couple of ways you can play chess online; by email or on a chess server.

Chess by mail

This follows the same principle as Postal Chess except, of course, it uses email. There are a few sites which can help you make contact with others wanting to play and act as a post-office of sorts to collect statistics and such.

• CorrespondenceChess.com
• International Correspondence Chess Federation
• Irish Correspondence Chess Association
• WORLD CORRESPONDENCE CHESS FEDERATION
• International Email Chess Group
• International E-mail Chess Club

 Check out Chessopolis for more links; also look for Web-interfaces for a slightly different experience.

Chess Servers

Generally all chess servers use the same technology, allowing you to play over the Internet in real-time. The great advantage of such servers is you can usually find a match at any time of the day, since visitors to these servers are world-wide in every time zone. On some servers, you can even play (or watch) Grand Masters or better.

There are two types of server:

Free Servers

These are publicly available servers which anyone can access and join.

• FICS: Free Internet Chess Server - web page - telnet to server
• Australian FICS - web page - telnet to server
• Brazilian FICS - web page - telnet to server
• Chilean FICS - telnet to server
• Croatian FICS - telnet to server
• Dutch FICS - web page - telnet to server
• French FICS - web page - telnet to server
• German FICS - web page - telnet to server

• International Champion Chess Network (ICS) - web page - telnet to server

Commercial Chess Servers

Basically you often have to pay (one way or another) for using these servers, which operate either as or by commercial organisations, although you can usually play for free as an anonymous player. Many of these servers are not compatible with ICS technologies so you play using programs like Xboard or Winboard.

• ICC: Internet Chess Club (ICS) - web page - telnet to server
• Chess.Net (ICS) - web page - telnet to server

• Chess.com (Recommended) - web page 
• Chessworld.net - web page
• Red Hot Pawn - web page
• Chesscube - web page
• Playchess (Recommended) - web page
• Gameknot - web page
• Chessfriends - web page
  

To play on any of these servers you will require a chess program capable of talking to the servers, and of course access to the Internet. Because of the difficulty in preventing players from using computer programs helping as they play, most online matches are Blitz.